Extrait

My private bone, my chance heart, I took
the temper of your pulse and bound it
to my compass. I thumbed a ride on the first
galleon out of town and scrubbed the decks
of my passage. Some strangers were kind:
they tore off pieces of bread and sheets
of parchment, on which to collect
my signature. By lantern light,
by moon and monsoon, my loneliness
looked back. But the point from which
I started was a ghost promontory, a wraith
that walked its ramparts in the mist;
a spray of volatile scent that traveled
from nocturnal hearts of blooms to strip me,
sway me, in the middle of a windowless room.

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Poet Luisa A. Igloria (Poetry Foundation web page, author webpage ) is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (Utah State University Press, 2014 May Swenson Prize), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She teaches on the faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University, which she directed from 2009-2015. When she isn’t writing, reading, or teaching, she cooks with her family, hand-binds books, and listens to tango music.